Seven
LOGAN
I reached the property for the pub and brewery and glanced around, through the swaying trees and shrubs as the hair on the back of my neck lifted and a weird tingly sensation filled my belly.
Nothing appeared off, or different, but something sure as hell felt off.
Like when animals sense an earthquake or tsunami before it happens, a strange sensation of …
an impending disruption came over me. What the fuck?
I knew weird shit went down here last year, and my cousins were on high alert.
They had ramped up all the security and seemed more paranoid than ever, but it wasn’t a nefarious feeling I got when I slowed my roll to crawl down the laneway at a safe speed.
It was … ominous. Like the threat of a storm or something.
I reached the security gate, rolled down my window, and punched in the code. It opened with no problem.
I parked Chloe’s car back in front of Dom’s house, and texted her that it was there and thanked her, then headed to Clint’s.
I had to stop myself from going to Jagger’s out of habit, and a wave of melancholy rushed through me.
Jagger probably wouldn’t have cared if I had Renée spend the night sometimes.
But I definitely couldn’t do that at Clint’s.
I entered the house where I found Talia and Bennett’s daughters, Emme and Aya, all beading quietly on the living room floor. Clint was busy in the kitchen. He caught my eye and smirked at me. “Welcome home.”
“Hey Logan!” the girls all said at the same time.
“Where did you sleep last night?” Talia asked, concern in her blue eyes. “At Renée’s?”
“Uh … yeah. We ended up watching a movie and fell asleep.”
Clint snorted from the kitchen.
But my answered seemed to satisfy the little ones, so I joined my cousin in the kitchen where it looked like he was busy making a snack for the girls.
“Bennett and Justine are working. Brooke is on a conference call in the office.” He placed cucumber slices on three plates. “I take it the date went well?”
I nodded and raked my fingers through my hair. “Anything weird happen here last night? Or this morning?”
Like I’d just asked him if he spotted the ninja on the roof of the pub, his gaze shot up to mine, fear on his face. “Weird how? What do you know? What do you mean? Did you see something? Someone?”
I rolled my eyes. “Nothing. No. I just got this strange, ominous feeling when I drove onto the property a couple of minutes ago. Not dangerous, just … like a storm or something is coming. A disturbance or disruption.”
“Seems like there’s always a fucking storm coming,” he murmured, setting a yogurt cup on each plate. “Girls, snack.”
“Thank you,” they all sung. A second later, three little pixies came to sit at the table.
I helped Clint set the plates and what looked like a fruit smoothie in front of the kids so he didn’t have to make a second trip.
Once the little ones were happily eating in the kitchen, he tilted his head to the side, for me to join him in the living room.
We kept our voices low and took a seat, him on the couch, me on the loveseat.
“What did you feel?” he asked, seriousness still in his eyes.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just this …unsettling feeling. Like something was or is coming down the pipeline, and it’s not going to be nice. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my belly got all queasy.”
“Just now?”
Nodding, I glanced into the kitchen to make sure the girls weren’t eavesdropping. “I’m not trying to freak you out or anything.”
Grabbing his phone out of his back pocket, he unlocked it, then shot off a text.
I’m assuming it was to the group chat among the brothers.
This wasn’t the first time their closeness made me envious.
My siblings had absolutely nothing to do with me.
I wasn’t a carbon copy of them. I wasn’t an academic or over-achiever; therefore, they couldn’t be bothered with me.
My parents also forbade them from speaking to me.
And god forbid three grown-ass adults disobey Mommy and Daddy’s orders and think for themselves.
They might get cut off financially. Even though all three of my siblings made bank in their own right, they wouldn’t dare go against my parents for fear of being exiled from the family fortune and inheritance.
I held zero questions as to whether or not I’d been removed from the will. I’m sure my parents did it the moment I told them Leila was pregnant. Even if I were still a beneficiary, I didn’t want their money. I didn’t want anything from them because it always came with strings attached.
“I need to have a shower and get ready for work,” I said, rising to my feet.
Clint merely nodded, his eyes glued to his phone.
“Nobody has seen or heard anything, but Dom’s going to do a sweep of the property.
Jagger said he’ll pop to Bonn Remmen’s land and have a look.
With Raina’s crazy family coming to the island and wanting to kidnap Marco, we can’t dismiss any weird feelings.
Those creepy fuckers could be lurking anywhere. ”
Right. I forgot about that.
That’s probably all it was. Maybe there were eyes on me as I entered the property. Hopefully, Dom or Jagger uncovered whatever it was. Or better yet, they didn’t find anything, and I was just slowly losing my mind.
I ran upstairs and jumped in the shower, reliving the last eighteen hours with Renée and how fucking perfect they’d been.
How fucking perfect she was. Her place was ridiculously cool, and the fact that she did so much of it herself was impressive.
I’d only just left her, and I was already itching to see her again.
This stage of a new relationship was always fun.
You couldn’t get enough of the person. All you wanted to do was spend time with them, have sex, talk, and laugh.
It was the easy part and even though I hadn’t really had too many long-term relationships where things got more challenging; we argued and had to work at it; I was also looking forward to that element, too.
I wanted a real commitment, a real relationship. I wanted the real deal.
Opening the door, with my robe on, since I didn’t really want to risk Talia or the other little girls seeing me in just a towel—I’m sure they’d be fine, but I was trying to be respectful—I paused halfway in the hall when familiar voices echoed upstairs.
“I want to see my son.”
Cold fingers tiptoed down my spine at the same time a balloon filled with lead dropped in my gut.
That was my mother’s voice.
“He’s in the shower,” Clint said, his voice calm but firm.
“Then I’ll wait.”
“Aunt Shirley, is Logan expecting you?”
“That’s irrelevant, Clinton. Please let my son know I’m here and that he shouldn’t make me wait very long. I would like to be … off this island sooner rather than later.”
Why was my mother here?
“Of course,” Clint said.
I rushed to my room, but didn’t close the door as I heard his footsteps climbing the stairs.
He found me, his face ashen. “Well, we know what that feeling was,” he said glumly. “I’m sorry, dude.”
“What does she want?” I sat down on the bed and stared blankly at the wall. “Why is she here?”
“Probably best to go down and find that out yourself,” he said.
I glared at him. “How long do you think I can sit up here before she comes to get me herself?”
That made my cousin snort. “I don’t know Aunt Shirley very well, but given that she flew across the country unannounced, I’d say you have about three minutes before she comes and grabs you by the ear.”
He was totally right. “Just … don’t let her near the kids. They’re sweet, young, and impressionable. They don’t need that WASP judgement tainting their perfectness.”
He snorted again and nodded. “On it.”
Clint left me to get dressed. I did so as fast as I could, throwing on a clean pair of jeans and a white polo shirt. I haphazardly ran some gel through my hair, but didn’t take the time to do the sexy curl on the forehead like I wanted to. I barely remembered to swipe on some deodorant.
My feet were made of concrete as I finally left my bedroom and headed downstairs, only to hear my mother asking all kinds of prying questions to the girls in the kitchen. “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Something that doesn’t require anymore school,” Aya said confidently.
“I hate school. I hate waking up early and being told what to do by people other than my parents. So I dunno … maybe a lady who lives in a tree and feeds the birds? Helps them make their nests? I haven’t decided yet.
And my dad says I don’t have to decide right now, anyway. ”
I had to pause before I entered the kitchen to compose myself. Aya was an absolute pistol of a child. She didn’t take shit from anybody and didn’t give a shit about anybody’s opinions. We all wished we could be a bit more like Aya.
“Oh no, dear, that’s unacceptable,” my mother said, aghast. “You have to got to school. You need a respectable job. There’s not much you can do these days without a formal education.”
“We’ll see,” Aya said, totally unaffected. “I think I’ll be okay. I’m not worried, so you don’t need to worry. Who are you?”
“Aya,” Clint scolded gently, “this is my aunt Shirley. So she is your great aunt. She is Cousin Logan’s mom.”
“Oh,” Aya said as I came around the corner. Her brown eyes landed on me, and I gave the sweet little eight-year-old a wink, which caused her to absolutely beam. “Logan, your mom’s here,” she said before turning back to her smoothie.
“Mother,” I said stiffly, coming to stand closer to Clint than my mother.
She was sitting in the empty chair at the table and stood up to embrace me in that barely touching, formal, fake way that rich people always seemed to do.
“Logan, dear.” She stood back and her eyes traipsed down my body from head to toe, her perfectly sculpted brows furrowing deeper and deeper as the agonizing seconds ticked by.
“What are you doing here, Mother?” I asked.